My initial problem wasn’t that the horse talked. That was always the premise of Mr. Ed, the 1960s CBS television series that featured Mr. Ed, a talking horse, and his amiable, goofy owner Wilbur Post (Alan Young), the only person with whom Mr. Ed conversed.
No, my initial problem was the horse played pool, as he does in the 1964 fifth-season episode of Mr. Ed called “Ed the Pool Player.” Talk about preposterous. As I’ve ranted in previous blog posts, billiards is not about simply knowing the angles. It can take years to master one’s stance, grip and bridge, all essential elements of the game. Even for an equine as intelligent and apparently well-schooled as Mr. Ed, it’s absurd – and physically impossible – that a horse could shoot billiards, simply by holding a cue stick in its mouth.
Who am I kidding? This is Hollywood, which has brought to the silver screen far more outlandish feats of animal athleticism than a pool-playing palomino. There have been basketball-playing dogs (Air Bud, 1997), football-playing mules (Gus, 1976), baseball-playing chimpanzees (Ed, 1996), horse-racing zebras (Racing Stripes, 2005), and even boxing kangaroos (Matilda, 1978).
That’s the fictional stuff. But, reality can be stranger than fiction. YouTube is littered with videos of animals excelling at sports, such as bears playing hockey, chimps ice-skating and squirrels water-skiing. Billiards is no exception. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported on a real dog named Halo that “not only sinks billiard balls into the pockets, but does so with a technical expertise we never would have thought possible.”
Watching the video of Halo the dog sinking some shots (sans cue stick, of course) pushed me beyond my initial resistance to “Ed the Pool Player” and freed me to evaluate the episode on the merit of its writing and acting. The full episode is available to watch here.
The basic storyline is that Alan’s neighbor Gordon (Leon Ames) needs to get out of the house, so his wife can cook without interruption. Alan suggests they play some billiards at the local men’s club. There, Gordon befriends Mr. Vernon, who turns out to be the pool shark Chicago Cubby (Thomas Gomez, the accomplished actor and Oscar-nominated thespian for his supporting role in Ride the Pink Horse). After a couple of convivial days shooting pool, Chicago Cubby ultimately hustles Gordon out of $430 (about $3200 in today’s dollars).
The ever-ignorant Gordon feels he just had a run of bad luck and proposes trying to win it back from his “friend,” but the ever-wise equine knows Gordon has been hustled and comes up with a different plan. Mr. Ed suggests they invite Mr. Vernon back to Alan’s place to play pool against an unnamed opponent. Mr. Vernon accepts the challenge and returns with Alan, at which time he finds out his opponent will be Mr. Ed. Feeling exceedingly confident that he can beat the horse, Mr. Vernon wagers the full $430. But, Mr. Ed, who earlier in the episode revealed he was an expert croquet player, “picks up” a cue stick and proceeds to demonstrate he is equally competent in billiards, running the tables on Mr. Vernon.
The match culminates with Mr. Ed making the over-used, never-fail, audience-pleasing six-balls-in-six-pockets trick shot. It’s kind of a shame. Up until that point, I was finally starting to believe a horse could play pool. But, the six-ball-six-pocket formation occurring naturally in billiards? Now that truly is preposterous.
